Marinha Grande, Portugal, April 27, 2026 (Lusa) - Several teams are currently deployed in Pinhal do Rei (a historical and vast national forest located along the coast of Portugal), in the municipality of Marinha Grande, clearing paths and firebreaks in a race against time to reduce the risk of wildfires before the summer heat arrives.
Vasco Fernandes, a forestry technician for the Marinha Grande Council, observes the tracks still blocked by trees that fell during Storm Kristin on the night of 27–28 January, on Pinhal do Rei.
Alongside Mário Silva, the second-in-command of the Marinha Grande Firefighters, they survey hectares of private land within a mainly public and managed by the Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests (ICNF) forest area.
Fernandes said that although numerous red dots on his digital map still indicate obstructed paths, the work was progressing at a good pace.
Four teams of five members, comprising the Special Civil Protection Force, ICNF sappers, the Armed Forces, and local fire brigades, are working to clear 115 kilometres of priority forest tracks out of a total of nearly 300 kilometres on private land.
"About half the work has been done.”
“Given the manpower we have in the area, we should be able to clear the main access routes within the next two weeks," the engineer from the municipality’s Forestry Technical Office told Lusa.
However, he acknowledged that the intervention remains a race against time.
"Now the fuel load [with fallen trees on the ground] is greater, which means that if we have a very hot summer, fires could become larger, more intense and spread faster.”
“It is essential that this initial intervention is even quicker and more effective,” he said.
Mário Silva also shared this apprehension, saying that while firefighters were concerned about the summer when there had been no recent fire, they were now extremely worried because the thermal load is sitting directly on the forest floor.
"We [the firefighters] hope that most of the access routes will be clear, but we are aware that we won’t be able to get everything done by the time the fire season arrives," he said, adding that they are doing everything they can before the summer arrives.
He also said that further clearing is planned near industrial zones and municipal roads, with the council having contracted work for roughly 200 hectares.
"What would normally be a task of maintaining the fuel management strip is now a matter of removing timber, which means the costs of the operation have tripled," he said.
Otávio Ferreira, a silvicultural engineer who worked at the ICNF for four decades before retiring in 2018, summarised the grim scene, saying that the 1,200 hectares of trees that survived the devastating 2017 fires have now been broken or uprooted by the recent storms.
Looking ahead, he believes maintenance work is needed in Pinhal do Rei, saying that after the 2017 fires, many pine trees that had regenerated naturally did not survive, having been stifled by unchecked undergrowth.
“When I joined in 1978, 200 people worked at Pinhal do Rei in Leiria.”
“When I left, in 2018, there were 20. There is no staff, no budget and no decision-making capacity,” he said.
Additionally, he called for the fallen timber to be removed as quickly as possible, though he acknowledged that the industry might struggle to absorb such a vast quantity of wood.
"The priority isn’t to clear everything, but to open up paths and clear 50 or 100 metres of the protected woodland.”
“If we can do that, it will be a great start. That needs to be done urgently," he said.
Ferreira hopes that the maritime pine will remain the dominant species in the area and that there will be a capable forestry service with the necessary resources so that Pinhal do Rei can once again become what it once was.
JGA/MYAL // ADB.
Lusa
